with the trustees of the testator. The three judges are required to make each a solemn public declaration that they will decide to the best of their ability according to the intention of the gentleman who founded the premium, and that in their arbitration they will not be influenced by prejudice or partiality. The judges on the late occasion were, Baden Powell, Henry Rogers, and Isaac Taylor. Their report was brought up before a meeting of the electors in the Town Hall of Aberdeen, Jan. 20, 1855. Two hundred and eight essays had been submitted for competition, and the two successful writers were declared to be Robert Anchor Thompson, M.A., for the first prize £1800.; and. for the second £600. the Rev. John Tulloch, D.D., Principal of St. Mary's College, St. Andrews.

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The following is an extract from the Report of the Judges: We, the Judges appointed for the Burnett prizes, in reporting to the Trustees the result at which we have arrived, feel it necessary first to state, that after giving careful examination to the whole of the Treatises sent in, we have found considerable difficulty in coming to a decision, not on account of any difference of opinion among ourselves, but on account of the very near approach to equality of merit in a considerable number of the Treatises. We should have been glad to find that there had been two Treatises so incontestably superior to the rest as to release us from all hesitation. Still though there is no Essay which, in our judgment, is not greatly capable of improvement, by omission or alteration (which we mention with reference to the future publication of such Essays); we are unanimously of opinion that there are three which stand by an appreciable interval in advance of the rest."

In bequeathing so considerable a sum of money for the foundation of two such premiums as those awarded to Mr. Thompson, and the Rev. Dr. Tulloch, (these premiums have amounted on the present occasion to £2400.) Mr. Burnett, we doubt not, was influenced by motives of charity and benevolence. His whole life seems to have been that of a well-disposed, though somewhat eccentric man. We are not unwilling, therefore, to acknowledge that the Aberdeen Merchant is entitled to such gratitude as a public benefactor deserves. There is sufficient reason to apprehend that faith in the supernatural has become entirely extinct; that the ideas of God, and of a future life have began to fade from men's minds, or to be utterly

distorted: a generous effort to rectify an evil of such magnitude can scarce fail to elicit general sympathy and admiration. While, however, we are convinced that the late Mr. Burnett has conferred a real benefit upon his country, we may be permitted to regret that the country should stand in need of such a benefit. The two premiums for the best essays on the existence of God were not founded merely for the purpose of encouraging philosophical studies, or of stimulating intellectual competition; far from it: they were founded for a more serious and more important object. At the period of Mr. Burnett's death the current of infidelity which has since grown into a rapid and ever swelling flood, had set in, and begun to spread its poisoned waters over England and Scotland. Mr. Burnett himself, we are told, had learned to doubt, and could not be reconciled to any known form of christianity. It was with the intention of arresting the progress of infidelity, of not allowing the abyss to become a lower abyss, that the premiums alluded to were founded; and we believe there are few persons who will not acknowledge that the object was a most meritorious one. At the same time the reflection will probably suggest itself to some of our readers, that if the country had remained Catholic, if the great principle of private judgment had not been preached in England, if men had continued to submit to the authority of the Church in questions appertaining to faith, so munificent a donation might have been employed for purposes more advantageous to religion, and to society.

In the present number of our Review we are obliged to restrict our observations to a few notes suggested by the reading of the first, though we should venture to say, not clearly the best of these Treatises. We may hereafter take occasion to present our readers, if not with a detailed examination of the contents of both books, at least with an abstract of the arguments which Catholic writers advance on Christian Theism.

Mr. Thompson's Essay we have perused attentively, and after a most careful examination we confess ourselves at a loss to discover how it is at all justly entitled to be considered a treatise on the particular theme proposed for the Burnett prize. The writer himself informs us in the preface that though ultimately directed to meet the appointed thesis, it is in some parts founded on notes which had been made without this reference, and before he had heard of

the expected competition. For ourselves we could easily be persuaded that the chief part of the essay had been compiled from such desultory notes. We have tried in vain to make out the connection between the various chapters in these two volumes, or to discover their bearing on the subject under discussion. Each chapter considered separately we have succeeded in understanding; but the logical nexus, if such there be, which binds them together has entirely escaped us. Mr. Thompson has undoubtedly collected a large quantity of materials, not very rare, nor very precious; and many persons would add not very solid; but such as the materials are, he has thrown them all into a pile; and the most patient and critical examiner will, we fancy, find it difficult to characterise the style of the building which he has attempted to erect from them, or to see how the different portions of it can be supposed to constitute one harmonious whole. If Mr. Thompson had undertaken to adduce a number of distinct and independent arguments in support of his thesis, we should perhaps have had occasion to be less surprised at this apparent want of unity and coherence in his essay. But no; he peremptorily, and in our judgment in a rather arbitrary fashion, discards all the usual arguments on the subject, and professes to rest his thesis exclusively on the argument from Design. At least so we understand him; for in truth it is extremely difficult to assign the portion or portions of his book in which there is any direct positive argument whatever to prove the existence of the Deity. At all events the confusion, and marked irrelevancy of which we have taken notice in Mr. Thompson's Treatise, are not the results of the multifarious array of arguments by which he would demonstrate his thesis. In fact he seems to have made rather copious notes on a variety of metaphysical subjects, before he had addressed himself to the immediate topic proposed for the Burnett prize; and probably he thought that these notes were too valuable and too interesting to be excluded even from a treatise with which they could scarcely have any legitimate connection.

Mr. Thompson's account of the various systems which have been proposed in the history of speculation to explain the origin of our knowledge, is the most uninviting and indeed the most purposeless we have ever read. For what class of readers has it been intended? Not surely for those who are mere hospites in the study of mental philoso

phy, and who have not yet mastered its alphabet. For them it is absolutely useless, because unintelligible. Nor can this poor synopsis have been seriously designed for the instruction of men who have themselves been at the pains of ever devoting a single half hour's attention to the matter discussed; for a half hour's reading of any respectable Catholic publication on the same subject would afford double the amount of knowledge to be derived from this lucky prize-essay.

Among other systems to account for the origin of our knowledge, Mr. Thompson refers to the Idealism of Berkeley; and by the reference shows pretty clearly that his acquaintance with the writings of the great Irish philosopher was not much more intimate or extensive than with the works of Leibnitz or Descartes. He leads us to infer that it is in Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge we are to look for a formal evolution of Berkeley's theory of Idealism; and he makes no more allusion to the Three Dialogues than if they had never been published: the fact being that in the former treatise the theory of Idealism is but incidentally referred to, while in the latter work alone, which appeared three years after the Principles of Human Knowledge, we have the system elaborately propounded and maintained. The following is Mr. Thompson's deliberate verdict upon Idealism:-" No reasoning can confute it, nor prove it to be impossible in the nature of things. It is quite conceivable that our life in the world may be not a reality, but a dream of which the figures and visions are represented according to certain rules and unchanging laws, by the agency of a superior Being. "We should be very slow to admit that the position of the Idealist is so impregnable as Mr. Thompson represents it. We hold that it is as capable of being refuted as any other absurd theory which has appeared in the history of speculation ; and that the assertion made by our essayist to the effect that our life in the world may be not a reality but a dream," is as opposed to the principles of christian Theism, as to those of sound philosophy. If Mr. Thompson, before composing his treatise, had been at the pains of reading the dissertations appended to Sir William Hamilton's edition of Reid, he would scarce have retained his present sentiments of reverence towards Idealism.

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The account which Mr. Thompson has given us of the various speculative "theories of existence," will to the

metaphysician, appear one of the most interesting passages in the work. Of the theories of existence we shall briefly indicate the most obvious, and then examine such as are commonly made the basis of infidelity. The possible theories may be divided into four classes, and these again into several distinct systems. They may be represented as follows.-I. Atheism, which assigns independent existence 1, to self, or the mind; 2, to the material world; 3, to both the mind and matter; 4, to neither of them; which is Nihilism.-II. Pantheism; which professes to acknowledge an eternal, self-existent Being; but either, 1, identifies its good with the known universe; or, 2, makes mind and matter to be necessary evolutions and inseparable parts of the divine nature.-III. Spurious Theism, which attributes independent existence to God, together with self-existent spirits-self-existent matter-self-existent spirits and matter.-IV. Monotheism which affirms the existence of One God, of Infinite Power, Wisdom and Goodness, by Whom all things exist. It becomes Christian Theism when its view of the Divine Character is consistent with that exhibited in Revelation.

Of these conceivable systems Mr. Thompson undertakes to review the first and second for the purpose of refuting them; the vindication of the fourth forms the main object for which his treatise professes to have been written. The third theory he deems it unnecessary to deal with; it has seldom appeared outside the mythology of Egypt, and the speculations of the Gnostics; and at present there is little danger of its revival. The author, therefore, restricts himself to a confutation of Atheistic Idealism, Atheistic Materialism, and Pantheism.

A systematic exposition and refutation of these theories would be a most valuable addition to our English philosophical literature. At the present day it would be difficult to overstate the importance of such refutation. It is very generally said, and we fear that there is little reason to question the accuracy of the statement, that in England and Scotland, where the people are not Catholic, faith is waning fast;-faith in God and in a future life; and that its light may soon go out for ever. The universities are represented as hot-beds of infidelity; and the Edinburgh Review is positive in asserting that the poison has extended to the lowest ranks of the working order. We do not believe that the ablest and most convincing essay that